Decay-Five Hargreeves
I’ll still love you even after we decay. Even when our bones are withered and there are bugs in our brains. Once a survivor, always a survivor but a victim to the outside world surrounding you. They look at you with pity. As if they knew the struggle of being stuck in the apocalypse for forty years. With nothing but a grumpy old man. Even when you were teens he was grumpy.
Although he had an excuse. Five always had an excuse with you although you were toxic to each other. You liked to hurt each other just to feel something. But you knew you would still love and want him even after you were buried six feet underground. Intrusive thoughts lingered oftentimes with a vengeance to kill him. Everyone wanted to murder Five as well as his siblings. Someone wanted them dead one way or another. However, you felt obligated to protect him from the trauma of seeing his siblings dead in their shared home that was once a mansion turned to rubble. Yet it was never enough.
Five still put tequila in his wine just to drink the visions away. Before Five you had a life under an alias running from Reginald Hargreeves and The Handler. They both knew of you and your little sister Lila. Lila was born approximately ten minutes after you were born. Which was odd considering every woman who gave birth that day had a cold at the same time. Yet, you were like the other children however, when the day began, and for the past nearly ten months your mother had been pregnant with you and only you. Ten minutes later spontaneously your sister was born.
She looked nothing like you however, she acted like you. You had the same abilities with yours being stronger somehow. Miraculously you succeeded until one day you felt someone almost as if their power was magnetic contacting you together. When Five jumped into 2019 you had no choice but to follow unknowingly. At first, it was a few minutes you jumped back, then into the nineties, again further into the seventies, and lastly before you both jumped across the street from one another side by side into the fifties. About a few minutes later he took one final jump to get home.
Five was unsuccessful with his last attempt. You went with him and you saw the piles of burning rubble that were once major buildings. Across the street or what was left of it you saw a boy your age. He looked distraught as he began to look around for someone. “Vanya, Ben, Luther, Klaus, anyone!” He shouted with the last of his breath. He was breathing heavily hunched over with tears in his eyes. His family was gone in front of him. “Hello, anyone else here?!” You shouted as if you hadn’t heard him scream for help.
You moved closer to him, weary of any last-standing rocks falling on you. Dodging each fire eloping the surrounding surface. Blood covered the surface of his palms and a faux eyeball was in between his fingers. “Hey, are you physically okay?” You asked the boy kneeling next to him resting one of your hands on the ground for stability and the other on your knee.
“So that isn’t your blood?” You asked, “It’s my siblings I just found them and this in my brother’s hand.” Five replied you nodded repeating the word okay in your head. Eventually, your knees got tired and you sat down on the ground next to him afraid to leave him. You had no idea what he would do if you left to go find food or build a shelter and leave him alone. Some part of you was connected to him although you just met him. “My name is Five by the way.” Five-spoke after about half an hour of just sitting in silence.
“Nice, I don’t have a name, my parents never got a chance to name me.” You admitted opening up to Five quicker than every good therapist ever could. “Then what do you go by?” Five asked, “Normally it’s just a kid.” You respond “We have to find a shelter and some food, maybe even water before night falls Five.” You say influencing the fact you both need to leave the same spot. “You’re right,” Five says “Wow, I have never said that to anyone.” Five admits “We’ll I guess I’m the lucky winner but let's get out of here Five.” You say you already stood up holding out your hand to guide the boy up.
That was the first time you met not knowing you would be the one to kill your parents with him. Or spend the next forty years walking the earth as the last people on earth. By age sixteen you both were equipped to survive a few years in comfort. You thought by nineteen that you would be dead by twenty-seven with food becoming more scarce. The first time you two kissed it lasted a few seconds, maybe even a minute. Within that moment you felt connected to him more than you had felt with anyone else. You didn't know this but when you were interested in a conversation you would always play with your hands folded in front of you. He loved the way you cocked her head slightly as you listened. As well as the way you furrowed her eyebrows when you disliked the person's standpoint on the topic.
By thirty you both were still able to search for new things. If either of you were lucky then both of you were lucky. Meaning it was a good day and you could hopefully eat. Time travel was a bitch, to say the least, but you found love and hate in a world where you two were the last people. Senrico questions that your friends always asked you became all too real. Even if you were to die you hoped you would be with him when you passed. Five was keen on the idea of getting you both home. You kept telling him how hard it was to write a happy ending when the future wasn’t decided yet.
He insisted that he would get you home, every time he mentioned it he would get excited at the thought of you meeting his siblings. It was you and him against the world wondering if you were going to make it out alive even if it meant eating cockroaches. At the age of fifty-six you and Five were able to get out of the end of the world. Hired as assigned time by the Temps Commission.
The unstoppable duo, around the office gossip, was how you and Five were legendary. Even as you two got older you kept working to meet his siblings it was a common goal. Eventually, you did, turns out your former employer doesn’t like it when their two best employees quit and leave without a two-week notice. You Pulled a silver metal flask out from the tight waistband of your uniform borrowed from the Umbrella Academy. You pursued your thin pink lips over the cold opening of the flask. Your mind was racing in the Indie 500 at the moment. T
he clear-tinted bourbon burned on the way going down. Although the day was young you insisted that the roof and the crisp air was better this time of night. Anything to look normal, your hands turned pink in the cold. Yet, you could care less that you were cold. Because you were warm inside. Buzzed, not drunk, however, your lover not so much. In the back of the van Delores was yelling at you or drinking on the job.
Delores the mannequin Five picked up and you just went with it because he was grieving. Goodbye, he whispered "No goodbye, I mean not now… I can't deal without you. Please say I'll see you again.”He said as a single teardrop leaked from his right eye. He always told everyone he wasn't able to cry. I guess it wasn't until he had to bid a foreign farewell to his once-upon-a-time true love. They shared one last kiss before bidding a I'll see you again someday. For years that someday would repeat in both of their heads. Forever they would love each other even if they promised that they would love each other until after they decay. When their bodies start to wither there are bugs inside of their brains.
“Babe, Babe!” Five panicked shaking you as you fell asleep. “Yeah?” You asked groggily Five held a hand to his heart relaxing as you woke up. “What’s wrong Five?” You asked while rubbing the crusty eye boogers from your eyelashes. “You were talking in your sleep. I thought you were keeping a dark secret or something was wrong.” Five admitted “No, and I’m glad that was a dream.” You admitted only to be woken up again this time in reality.
Your parents came into the room with soup and some tea to settle your stomach. “Pumpkin, I brought you some soup and tea. Are you okay with love?” They ask you.
“Yeah, just a weird dream.” You admit looking around because it all felt so real. Your guardian runs their hand across your forehead and the sides of your face checking for a high temperature.
“Oh my! Kiddo you are just burning up. I’m going to get you some Tylenol. I will be right back.” Your parents say. “I guess it was just a fever dream after all.” You mumble sitting up and adjusting yourself.